Family Earned
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day 1108b: Brittany has never met her grandmother, though the more puzzling matter is that the woman doesn't know she exists. - Anniversary cycle day 16 of 21, shift B


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 52nd cycle. Now cycle 53!_

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_**THIRD ANNIVERSARY CYCLE: **It's late October again, and within this cycle I will be completing my third year of daily gleekathon stories and commencing a fourth! As in previous years, this means special things happening. I've selected my favorite stories from throughout the year, and I'll be treating them to something special. In previous years this included Prequel, Sequel, and POV Swap, and then Additional Scenes and Alternate Endings. This year I'm adding two new treatments: Genre Swap (I think that's pretty straightforward) and Element Change (I change one thing in the story, see how it affects the rest). Note that in both these cases and some of the others, there may excerpts directly transferred from the story it references. Also, since this year saw the addition of 'shift days', and since I suck at picking, I have selected 42 stories, to be treated two per day! So here we go!_

_**This story** is a POV Swap to Cordially Decline, a Sylvesters series story, originally posted on January 20 2012._

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_**This is a double shift day.** There will be one more upload today: Luck of the Irish._

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**"Family Earned"  
Brittany & Sue  
Sylvesters series extra  
_(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)_  
**

When she was little, Brittany remembered asking her mother about her grandparents, about her own mother and father. Sue would say that her father was dead, and that her mother was never around, but that even if she was she would never know how to appreciate Brittany for who she was. She wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean, but she was small and she didn't question it.

Somewhere around her twelfth birthday though, she had ended up asking her mother about her grandmother, and although Sue had sort of tried to sidestep the entire subject, eventually Brittany had been told the truth: her grandmother didn't know she even existed. It had been a fact of their lives by now that most people didn't know the two of them were mother and daughter, but that was just this secret the two of them had. She never figured this would include family, even if there was her aunt Jean who didn't know they were related, but there was a reason for that and she got it. But this was different. Her grandmother was not only unaware of their relationship, she didn't know she existed at all.

For a long time she hadn't known how to respond to that. Her mother clearly didn't want to talk about it, and Brittany couldn't see why she would bring it up if that was the case. But somewhere in her heart, for how much she had accepted to live this lie from day to day, to realize her very existence had been kept from someone who was meant to be family, when she had been given absolutely zero reason for it… She wasn't sure if she should have been scared or hurt. Eventually she had come to the conclusion that her mother had always only ever done things in her best interest, and if she didn't want her grandmother knowing about her, then there had to be a reason, a proper and solid reason. Through those years she had managed to build a portrait of Doris Sylvester, with what little information Sue shared about her, and what it came to was that she wasn't sure she really even wanted to meet the woman.

Only one day she had gone looking for her mother, for some reason or another, and she'd found her in the auditorium. She had been about to step into the light, to reveal herself to her, but then she'd seen another woman step up on the stage where her mother stood, and she froze. She knew the face looked familiar, though she couldn't place it, and then… Her mother had said something, and Brittany understood: This was her, this was the grandmother she had never met, the one who, last she knew, still had no idea she was a grandmother. So she had taken a few steps back, retreating into the protection of the shadows. They looked busy, so they might not have seen her, but when it came to this she generally didn't take chances.

She stood there, watching them, and… she felt cold to the woman. She didn't like the way she was with her mother, and she care that much more for the way her being there seemed to affect Sue. She had left the auditorium before either of them could spot her, and she had sort of forgotten what she'd even gone there to do. All she was feeling was pain and confusion… She knew how her mother could be, to her, and to others, but then there'd be times, especially when it was just the two of them, where she knew she was seeing the real her. Even when she was being difficult, Brittany could see what was underneath. Looking at Doris Sylvester, she felt nothing like that.

The encounter, or non-encounter, had been left to the back of her mind, and a few days later she had something else to deal with anyway. She was home, making herself something for a snack in the kitchen, when she heard her mother calling for her. She went to stand at the edge of the kitchen, looking into the hall. "Yeah?" she asked.

"I need to talk to you about something," her mother had told her.

"Me too," Brittany had approached her.

"Oh? Well you go first then," her mother had said, so she did.

"Kurt's dad and Finn's mom are getting married… to each other."

"Well, good for them," her mother had nodded, but that wasn't all of it.

"Kurt wants us all to be there and perform for them. Thing is it's on the same day as your thing." She wasn't sure what was the deal with her mother and this wedding to herself. Personally she couldn't see any point to it, but this was her mother… They were having issues at the moment, but even then if it had been just that, she probably still would have gone.

"Oh…" her mother had responded.

"So… I'm going to go and perform with them." She had given it a lot of thought, and really she had assessed herself as more needed at the Hummel-Hudson wedding. She didn't want to leave her mother hanging though, especially seeing how it seemed to hit her hard. "But I might be able to make it for part of yours if I leave early…"

"N-no, don't worry about it," her mother had shook her head. "You go, you have a good time." Brittany didn't know what else to say, so she had accepted this, smiling back to her mother and returning to the kitchen.

For a while she had been able to forget about the place where, either way, she knew she should have been. The performance had made everyone happy, the party had been fun… After a while though she had to remember her mother, and thinking that she had chosen someone else's day over hers, it made her feel rotten and mean. She'd ended up sitting there quietly while all her friends danced. Artie had tried to get her back on her feet, Santana had tried as well, then Quinn, but she was fine just sitting there, guarding the piece of cake she had meticulously found a way to wrap. When people would ask her who it was for, she'd say it was for her cat.

Finally the party had been over, and she had gathered her things to return home. When she got there, she found her mother sitting on the couch, wearing her blue track wedding dress, and… She looked so alone in that moment, making Brittany feel like she had definitely made the wrong choice. Eventually her mother had spotted her. "How was the wedding?" she'd asked.

"Great," Brittany promised her, knowing she'd want to know that much. "Well, the party, and the dance before… I kind of fell asleep during the actual wedding," she explained, her hand going to the spot where Santana had prodded her with her elbow.

"Good," her mother had nodded, but then she'd stopped, and looking at her, she couldn't help but think something was wrong.

"Are you okay?" she had to ask. After a beat, her mother had motioned for her to come sit at her side, and so she did.

"Your… your grandmother was at the wedding," she revealed. "Mine, not the other." Brittany froze.

"She was?" She guessed it would explain why she'd been there a few days ago… Maybe she'd come for the wedding. That meant if she had decided to go then… Was this why her mother had been so willing to let her go to Burt and Carole's ceremony?

"She'll be gone now to sulk back to her cave," Sue had told her, and Brittany had to ask…

"She still doesn't know about me?"

"She doesn't and she never will not if I have anything to say about it." All these years she hadn't really considered it like this, but from what little she had seen of her grandmother, it wouldn't have been the craziest of ideas to think that her mother might have been keeping her hidden because of the way she was, and the way she would be to her. Now her mother's telling her that she wouldn't have appreciated her just took on a whole new meaning. "Did you want her to?" her mother's voice had drawn her back.

"No," she'd replied, shaking her head, without giving it that much more thought. It had just come out, and it was the truth. She didn't want to know that woman. She hadn't really kept the fact that she'd seen them together in the auditorium on purpose, it had just happened that way, but now she sat there, biting her lip, and she knew she should probably keep it that way. Then she remembered something, and she thought after the day her mother had gone through, this might have been exactly what she needed. "I brought you something," she revealed, her hand going into her bag to retrieve the wrapped piece of cake. She was relieved to see it had survived the trip. When she presented it to her mother and saw the smile on her face, it didn't matter that they were fighting more these days, or that either of them had been made sad or angry by the visit of Doris Sylvester. It was just the two of them, mother and daughter and a piece of cake, and nothing else needed to matter, if only for now.

THE END

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******A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
************always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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